Sprint Nextel started things off by increasing the amount it charges for SMS messages. Cingular dove in next and angered a lot of customers by sticking to its early termination fee despite a 50% price increase for a central service....

Cingular has announced a 50% price increase for the price for an SMS message. Starting January 21st SMS messages will cost 15 cents (this applies to both sending and receiving). Sprint made this same move back in October. Despite the...

Sprint Nextel has raised the rate of an outgoing SMS message to 15 cents, up from the fairly industry standard 10 cents. Along with the hike for SMS, casual data usage (when there isn't a data plan) was raised a...

3jam wasn't the only SMS news out of DEMOfall, 4INFO has announced Mobile Open Platform Beta. The program allows developers to create their own mobile services on top of 4INFO's existing technology (SMS and WAP accessible). After registering there is...

A startup tired of limited group features in standard SMS has launched a reply-to-all service dubbed 3jam. With 3jam users can send a text message to a group and the twist is that replies to that message then go back...

Virgin Mobile USA has announced a short story named Ghost Town that will be delivered exclusively through text messages. Two messages will be sent per day over a five week period. The first messages will be sent out on August...

Podcasting startup Odeo launched a mobile focused side project dubbed twttr this weekend. The free service brings social networking features to regular SMS. Unlike Dodgeball, twttr is not limited to a select set of cities. twttr is accessible through the...

The US Federal Government is updating the existing warning system to be savvy with SMS. The existing alert system currently covers broadcast TV channels and AM radio stations. By the end of next year it's possible that your phone will...

eBay has launched a service to alert buyers via SMS of events in auctions they are participating in. Text messaging is just one of three new alerts eBay launched, but is the only one available today. Alerts via phone call...

Sprint Nextel announced Text to Landline, a clever service that allows Sprint customers to SMS any landline phone in the US. The text message is converted into a voice message which gets played back for the reciepient. At that point...

PayPal has quietly launched a new mobile enabled version of its fund trading service (we hinted it was coming last month). Customers must first activate the mobile component of PayPal by heading online. After that you'll be able to...

So much for the rumors of VeriSign getting out of the mobile business, today the company announced an acquisition of m-Cube for $250 million. According to reports, Motricity was competing with VeriSign over the purchase. m-Cube facilitates mobile billing...

Google updated its SMS search tool to include live sports scores. Competing SMS search service 4INFO has supported this feature for quite some time. To get a sports score via Google SMS, compose a new text message and put...

A 13-year old New Jersey girl that went missing on Monday has sent her mother a series of chilling text message describing her situation. One of the messages reads: "Someone was following me and I just don't remember what...

According to Moscow based Kaspersky Labs, a new Trojan horse that is able to infect almost any mobile phone or PDA is in the wild. The Trojan called "RedBrowser" targets traditional mobile phones running Java as well as the newer...

T-mobile has doubled the price of SMS messages from $0.05 to $0.10 in the U.S.. Though this price hike is not good news for T-Mobile subscribers, it's made worse with the fact that customers are reporting no way to...

Verizon Wireless today announced that it has won a permanent injunction against a Florida company it accused of sending spam SMS messages. Passport Holidays sent 98,000 spam text messages to Verizon Wireless subscribers. The company will also pay $10,000...

Gannett today announced a minority investment in 4INFO, a mobile search company that we profiled last year. Gannett is the largest newspaper group in the US with a combined daily circulation of 7.6 million. Thanks to the investment, 4INFO...

While South Korea is using SMS to send court indictments, pimps in India are using text messages to get new business. According to IndiaDaily: The pimps send random SMSes to corporate salary account holders of leading private banks, offering...

In another sign that SMS is becoming the preferred method of communication in many parts of the world, South Korea announced that indicted will soon be served via text messages. According to Reuters the service will be opt-in, but it...

As part of an update to its alerts feature, Yahoo added a feature that allows users to get RSS results via SMS. The free service will send a message to your phone with every new item posted to an RSS...

Verizon Wireless has filed a lawsuit against a Florida business accused of sending thousands of spam SMS messages. Passport Holidays of Ormond Beach, FL purportedly sent more than 98,000 unsolicited messages concerning Bahama cruises to Verizon Wireless customers. The lawsuit...

USA Today, the nation's largest newspaper, has recently added a couple of SMS enabled features to its paper based product. The first is a poll feature that's part of a partnership with Dwango Wireless and has been advertised with large...

Yahoo today launched an SMS search service very similar to a feature offered by Google. To try out the service, send a query to the short code 92466 (that spells YAHOO on most phone keyboards). A local search can be...

According to data gathered by research firm IDC, American flyers would rather use their cell phones for activities other than voice communication. A hot topic because of FCC and FAA regulation, in-flight cellular communication was recently opposed by (of all...

The fourth season of American Idol came to a close this week with Carrie Underwood being named the winner. While SMS is still largely unused in the US, American Idol viewers sent a record 41.5 million text messages during the...

AMBER Alert, the nationwide notification service for missing children, has announced a new SMS feature that allows users to keep abreast of alerts in their home area. To sign up for the free service (only carrier imposed SMS fees apply),...

Dodgeball, a SMS based social networking service, has announced that Google has purchased the company. The two-person team that currently runs the service explained the move in their own words: bq. As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken...

Verizon Wireless has expanded its popular "IN" calling plan (free calls to every other Verizon Wireless customer) to messaging. For $5 a month customers can have unlimited text, picture and video messaging to other Verizon Wireless users. A plan costing...

Many Nextel users are experiencing very long delays when sending or receiving text messages. Nextel claims that it's because their network is being flooded with millions of spam messages and the filters are bogged down. More hardware was supposed to...

Jamster, a ringtone and mobile content sales company, has been sued for false advertising. The suit which was filed in San Diego states that Jamster falsely advertises that users can get a free ringtone. In reality said ringtones cost $1.99....

We've heard a lot about a company called SMS.ac from our readers. Online investigation reveals a lot of angry former customers (and a few employees). We'd like to hear what you have to say, either positive or negative. For unfamiliar...

Yahoo! Local recently added a feature to its results page that allows computer users to send the search results to a mobile phone via SMS. No fee is imposed by Yahoo!, but standard text messaging fees will apply from mobile...

The Daily Herald of Provo Utah is reporting that a high school student has broken the world record for text message speed. The official phrase to type under time pressure is: bq. The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and...

Italy is considering a small tax for every text message sent in the country. It has already happened in the Philippines. Here's how it would work: bq. The Premier, Silvio Berlusconi, is considering a one euro cent (0.6p) levy on...

Computer experts are talking about a new Windows based trojan horse that sends spam messages to mobile phones through SMS. The Delf-HA Trojan downloads a spam campaign from the internet and then sends it to random mobile phones numbers in...

Verizon Wireless has launched a free service that lets customers check their text message usage quickly: just dial #3282 (DATA) and hit send. You'll be connected to an automated system that will tell you your usage but you will also...

Because of hot demand for information on the Scott Peterson trial, CourtTV has set up a free text message alert service. Subscribers will get two messages: the first when jury deliberations have ended and the second when the verdict is...

With last week's launch of Google SMS, the world's most popular search platform made a big entrance into the mobile space. The Google SMS service is limited to only a handful functions at this time, but MobileTracker believes the service...

Google today announced Google SMS beta, a service that allows mobile phone users to search Google via text messages. Just send your query to 46645 (GOOGL on most phones) and you'll get back results in another text message. Currently the...

A chinese man has written a novel that is designed to be read via 60 SMS messages. Calling the work a novel might be a stretch considering it's only 4,000 words, but reading 4,000 words off a mobile phone is...

Verizon Wireless teamed up with Autodesk Location Service to provide free SMS based traffic alerts for several days around the 4th of July. Through VText.com, customers are able to set up a driving route and choose times for alerts to...

McDonalds has partnered with AT&T Wireless to power a new Olympics based "on-package" game. The only way to play the trivia game is through text messages. It's not clear if only AT&T Wireless customers can play, but that is most...

Verizon Wireless has made its SMS network go global, with service in countries such as Mexico, the UK and Japan. However, only certain carriers are supported for each country, you need to check the list before sending. For messages sent...

A young man in New Zealand decided to protest his mobile phone carrier's decision to end an unlimited SMS plan by sending over 80,000 text messages from his phone. Sending the messages (all by hand) took 16-hours a day and...

In Fox's "American Idol", viewers can vote for their favorite contestent via either a phone call or text message (only from AT&T Wireless phones). AT&T Wireless announced that during the latest season, 13.5 million SMS votes were cast. The total...

A story out of Korea notes that 1 in 10 SMS messages in the country are spam. While that number may seem high, remember when email was only 10% spam? According to the latest reports, more than half of email...

The AP has an article about newspapers seeing text messaging as a gathering threat. The "thumb generation" is sending news, rumors and gossip around the globe in real time without newspapers getting a piece of the action. The Madrid bombings...

While goverments being strapped for cash is nothing new, looking to text messages to help ease the pain is. The Philippine goverment is considering putting a tax on text messages that would bring in an estimated 500 million pesos per...

AT&T Wireless today announced that its customers can now send and receive text messages (SMS) with over 263 million mobile phone users in Europe. Back in September 2003, the company added many South American countries to its SMS list. The...

We have mentioned mobile spam several times in the past, but it's mostly a non-American thing. However, the FCC has announced plans to keep spam off US handsets. Since email spam is out of control (no rules will stop it...

Unsolicited SMS spam messsages are getting more popular according to a Retuers article. Over half of Europe's cell phone users report receiving up to five unsolicited text messages a week on their handsets. The US doesn't have nearly as big...

While American wireless carriers can't force customers to send text messages, UK citizens are sending too many--welcome to SMS addiction. The Priory, a well known detox clinic in the UK is helping patrons with text frenzy. The first case used...

The UK hit a record for SMS on new years day. The number of text messages sent in the first 24 hours of 2004 totaled 111 million. That's 8% more than last year, and nearly twice the daily average of...

Macintosh enthusiast site MacTeens let us know that they are providing live coverage of the popular MacWorld conference via SMS. According to the site, it's the first such use of SMS. You can sign up for free here. The most...

LG USA's Text In The City competition has concluded. The goal was to find the biggest flirt that uses text messages as their medium. The results? Four hyper-cheesy pickup lines that you're free to use if you dare. Male *...

Verizon Wireless has introduced a wireless IM application that resembles its desktop counterparts. It's billed as the first graphic-based IM application with access to multiple services for mobiles. It works today with both MSN and AIM, and Yahoo! starting next...

Text message fever is still gripping the UK according to a new report out of the Mobile Data Association. The figures, released yesterday, show that UK mobile phone users sent a record 1.8 billion text messages last month....

It's no secret that SMS is popular in Asia, but this story really highlights it. A teen racked up $2300 in charges for 15 days of texting. How? Chat rooms mostly. Because of other similar cases, SIM cards that limit...

A study out of the UK suggests that 25% of people have text messaged while driving. Of that 25%, 10% said they had actually written (not just read) messages while driving. Last week a man who was writing a text...

AT&T Wireless has taken the first step to allow its subscribers to text message friends half a world away. As of today, you can send an SMS to: Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Germany, Mexico, Philippines, Panama,...

Cingular has announced that it has partnered with AOL to provide AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) on its mobile phones. The service should be completely integrated by the end of the year. Although there are similar partnerships with other carriers, Cingular...

Airline technology provider SITA recently launched technology for commercial two-way SMS service. The company said its working closely with several airlines, and hopes to announce the first customer soon. We've covered phones in planes before [1, 2, 3], but this...

Here at MobileTracker HQ we've had a lot of extra time. Thanks mostly to not seeing Gigli. We may not be alone--Hollywood is blaming "texters" for bombs. Seems like the easy way out: bq. "Because movie-goers are so quick to...

Times have changed--if you're a Malaysian Muslim man, you can now divorce your wife via a text message! You may remember that in 2001 a story came out stating that divorce by SMS was wrong. bq. "Hamid Othman, adviser to...

The new over-the-top Fox show Banzai allows viewers to vote via SMS. The show which premiered last night didn't put much focus on the SMS voting, but flashed the number several times during the 30 minute program. Check back next...

MacMinute notes that AIM version 4.6 for the MacOS adds SMS support. We noted last week that Apple's iChat application has the same technology built in. To send an IM to a mobile phone, send it to +1xxx-xxx-xxxx without the...

Several weeks ago, MobileTracker publisher Jon Gales was sitting in PF Changs and thought that instead of the bulky pagers common at casual restaurants, an SMS sent to his cell phone would be a much better solution. There are numerous...

A zoo in Denmark is starting up a system that tags the children with a little Bluetooth device which pings transponders across the park that relay the location of the child to a database. Parents can send a text message...

US Presidential candidate Howard Dean is using text messages in his campaign. This has been proven to work in countries where SMS is a common communication platform, but not in the US. It will be interesting to see how this...

Korea has taken a big step to curb mobile spam. They stopped local mobile carriers from launching a common wireless Internet platform called WIPI until effective anti-spam measures are made. Of course, there is a downside as well... The government...

According to a recent BBC report, SMS has taken the lead as the most popular function young people use their mobile phones for. 80% of people under 25 would rather send an SMS than make a call, but the number...

Following up on our previous report on SMS Spam, it looks like Australia is cracking down. The West Australian is reporting that carriers that don't crack down on junk SMS messages will face fines of up to $10 million AU....

According to Will Sturgeon over at Silicon.com, spam on mobile devices is becoming a problem. He cites that over 2/3 of mobile users have gotten an unsolicited SMS. However unlike email, SMS has a cost to it--usually a per message...

CD's aren't selling well for several reasons (according to the record labels it's just one reason, but that is a gross simplification). The new thing on the block is selling ring tones and backgrounds for cell phones. That's not news,...

InfoSync World has a neat article on a new product called Fortress SMS for Symbian or Series 60 powered phones that encrypted SMS messages. The software uses AES encryption, so unless you're up against someone with a super computer and...

Cellular-News is reporting (without a link as is their style) that SMS is taking off in the US. Historically consumers in the US have been slow to adopt text messaging as airtime is comparatively cheap. The story may indeed be...

According to C|NET, Yahoo! IM is coming Cingular subscribers. The service allows customers to chat with parties on a PC (Mobile-to-PC). With services such as SMS, communication is only mobile-to-mobile....

Tired of having to check your email to get spam? Marketing types are working hard to bring you ads via SMS. According to the Mobile Marketing Association it will turn into an $8 billion industry. The bright side is that...

It looks like people in the US have finally figured out how to text message via their mobile phones. American Idol, a popular show seen on Fox, has allowed its viewers to cast votes by sending text messages. To date...

A week ago we noted that Sunday Communications in Hong Kong started up a service to alert its customers about possible SARS cases in the area. Today, Xeni Jardin over at Wired takes a look at the impact of text...

C|NET is running an article about the state of "interactive TV" by way of cellular phones. It sounds like a good idea, but it's hard to imagine a cell phone being more useful for interactive TV than the PC. Most...

The Economist (great mag but don't read it when you're sleepy) has an interesting article on SMS in the US. Americans only send 7 SMS messages per month compared to the global average of 30 (and as high as 200...